Hole-y hearts

This summer has been a very trying season for me. Some of this relates to the fact that much of my childhood trauma happened during the summer. I have never had a fondness for this season so a slightly unsettled feeling is common but this is something more. Summer is also family time, picnics, reunions, vacations, weekend outings, barbecues, everything about this season focuses on family. What is it about family that makes me so unsettled?

Maybe it is the fact that it has been almost a year since Kate and the kids left for India, that sad day when a piece of my heart was ripped out and taken far away. That void is still as raw and fresh today as it was the day they left. Even though I have other children and two other beautiful, wonderful grandchildren, I still find myself with holes that a few phone conversations a month and a week or two of face-to-face time doesn’t seem to come close to filling. Worldly solutions, other people or things don’t work.

I am learning that to truly love someone means that forever there will be a place in the heart that only they can fill, specially fitted and designed just for them. The heart expands to allow more people to have a place there in your heart but these new people never replace or fill in the voids left by another’s absence. I believe my lesson in this season is to see that the Father’s love flows into those voids, if I allow it, not to cover up, deny their existence or to fill them with something else but to keep the voids there, to keep that special place reserved and ready, to keep the heart soft and pliable and to keep it from shrinking down to a hard shriveled pile of nothingness.

The tension of this season is continuing to live a full life with a heart that often feels more full of holes than substance rather than live in a constant state of grief and mourning. To love new people even though the risk of another void is a definite outcome when it would be easier to shut oneself off to the possibility of any new relationships and protect oneself from any new holes. To remain in relationship with the people who are absent, to allow them back into the void, even if it is only for a brief encounter, a phone call or occasional visit, instead of closing oneself off from them and eliminating any possibility of further pain. To allow the Father’s love, His grace and peace to flow in and fill every gap and crack and to choose to live with hope and joy, with the faith that He will never leave, that He came to fill hearts, to keep them soft and pliable. I have learned that God never promised to keep all holes and voids out of our hearts, but He did promise to always fill us so that we can continue on our walk. He never meant for us to deal with those holes on our own, with our own strength, power or ability. That is His job and He is so much better suited for it, if we will only let Him.

The holes I carry with me may never again be filled with those special people in which they were created but my life is becoming a living testimony that one can continue to grow and thrive when one allows God to be the thing that fills our heart, holes and all.

What holes or voids to do you have in your heart? With what have you filled them? Maybe it is time to let God in. Take it from someone who has tried a lot of other ways, He is the only way that works.